


Snap Your Teeth

by 99BottlesOfBeerOnTheWall



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, I don’t know how to tag this, Internal Monologue, Isolation, Starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 05:17:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20669951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/99BottlesOfBeerOnTheWall/pseuds/99BottlesOfBeerOnTheWall
Summary: “You are going to stay out here for awhile, I think. If you want to eat, you had better be prepared to fight for it.” With that Ikithon opens the latch to the kennel and tosses Bren inside, closing and locking it behind him.Bren fights for survival, and emerges victorious from a battle that teaches him a lesson...but maybe not quite the one Ikithon intended...





	Snap Your Teeth

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [with teeth that gleam (click-a-clack)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20075308) by [AnaliseGrey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnaliseGrey/pseuds/AnaliseGrey). 

> I read this fic, and the story intrigued me. 
> 
> I’m a huge dog lover, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to dig a little deeper. Dogs are fascinating animals, with their own pack instincts and social hierarchy. I was interested to figure out how Bren might observe and conform with these rules. For the purposes of that, I’ve made the amount of time Bren spends with the dogs longer, and probably changed the intended meaning of the original story? Anyways, I hope its good. 
> 
> Mostly this is three thousand words of the longest Animal Handling check ever.
> 
> (Also, if dog biting/showing aggressive behavior Triggers you, this is not the fic for you!)

Bren crouched in the rank straw, eyeing the dogs fearfully.

They were big, lanky, vicious animals. Obviously wolffish and cunning from being underfed. Ikithon’s hounds were rarely used outside, and mostly Trent seemed to take little interest in them...but Bren knew, from the few times he’d watched them hunt, that they were dangerous.

Mostly they regarded him with the same cautious defense that he gave them, padding in circles at a safe distance. Sniffing mostly, trying to discover what his presence meant. Obviously he wasn’t like their usual visitants, or the scraps they eked out an existence on. Yet, he was something, and Bren guessed they were only weighing the danger of trying to get their teeth in him, and whether it would be worth the risk.

One large black brute, a stocky hound larger than the rest, skirted closer as if to test the boundary. Every muscle tensed and quivering, muzzle half bared, as its dark eyes glittered hungrily.

Bren struck out to ward it away, and the beast snarled viciously and snapped its teeth at his hand, backing up with its hackles raised. Desperate for shelter, and something solid against his back, Bren moved sideways. The wall met his back, and he wedged himself into the corner, huddled behind his knees. And there he settled, watching the dogs every move.

The first day passed in watchful dislike.

***

Bren woke in the gray half light of morning, to the sound of the grooms bringing food. He was a grizzled man Bren had never seen before, and didn’t know the name of. Obviously under orders, he didn’t even look in Bren’s direction, and silently dumped a bucket of table scraps and shreds of raw meat into the kennel. Then he turned his back, and walked off.

The dogs hardly waited for him to leave.

Before he’d gone, they’d already pounced on the food, and on each other. A cacophony of snarling and snapping teeth broke out, each dog fighting with his neighbor over the smallest scraps. It was a vicious abandon that told the story of their treatment more clearly than if they’d spoken, obviously seizing what they could because it was all they had, and utterly indifferent to the hardship of weaker animals. This was about the strong versus the weak.

Bren shriveled under the spectacle, his stomach heavy with nausea. He couldn’t imagine joining this rabid pack of killers...but it was the only option he had...

And if he failed? He would become just like those bloody shreds of meat and moldy bread.

***

Most of the next two days passed in starving abstinence.

He was hungry...ravenous for real food. But couldn’t face the danger that came with eating. He would fast just a little longer.

***

On the forth day, he made an effort to join the food frenzy.

The hollow of his stomach was a crying need for sustenance, and the part of Bren’s mind that was still a web of logic knew he couldn’t prolong the fasting forever. His hands were starting to tremble even when he tried to keep them still, and he noted the bony appearance of his arms with clinical evaluation. He needed to eat, and this couldn’t go on forever.

A weak sentimentality made him argue that Trent would come to his rescue. But he knew that argument was more unsound than any other. He knew his teacher too well for that. Ikithon might leave him here until he starved himself to death, and mourn the loss of a talented student, but never do more than that.

This was a lesson, and Bren wouldn’t be showed leniency, until he learned it.

Like regular clockwork, the groom came with his bucket of slops, and Bren was waiting for him as eagerly as the dogs. A memory of unerring accuracy could be a blessing, and a curse, as Bren was just starting to learn. With time and deepening scars, as his boundaries and reservations were slowly pushed to extremities, he was just starting to dread the tales his mind could tell.

In this moment however, it was a useful tool.

Already his mind had marked the exact time of day when the man would come. When the familiar booted step was heard, Bren was already crouching against the side of the enclosure, positioned to be as close as possible to the food when it fell.

With a grunt, the man dumped the bucket, and moved away. Bren had already lunged for the food before that. He dived into the meager pile, seizing at the closest things he could get his hands on...then one of the dogs snapped at him.

It took only moments for the unattended pile of scraps to become a vicious battle of wills. A dog snatched at the stale bread in one hand, another latched onto Bren’s shred of old roast meat and fought him for it. The meat vanished like a dream from his hand, that he tried to reclaim. Then he felt teeth snap down on his arm. The attacker was vicious, and knew their work, gripping him tenaciously. Bren felt himself scream, as he wrenched himself free and blood dripped down his arm.

Then one of them leapt at his throat.

He jumped away, just barely fending the monster off as it bit his hand instead of his neck. Scrambling backwards, one of the beasts followed him, nipping at the bread in his palm. Desperate only to escape the hunt, Bren yielded his winnings, and retreated against the wall.

Finally, they left him to himself.

Curling in on himself in the safety of the corner, Bren finally risked a look at his bloody arms. Just touching the shredded flesh made him hiss, catching a sob behind his teeth as he craned his head back to look at the ceiling. His eyes burned with the tears he didn’t dare tolerate, and he struggled to find his breathing.

But in the end, he did cry. The tears came against his will, as he shredded the bottom of his shirt to make dirty bandages. He bit his lip until the blood came, somehow managed to imperfectly dress his wounds, and finally allowed himself to hug his arms against his stomach and sob into his knees.

His stomach ached for food the entire time.

***

The dogs were starting to turn on him. Their disinterest turning sour. As the days dragged by, and Bren watched himself getting thinner and weaker, he fearfully noticed them getting bolder.

He woke on the tenth day to find himself slumped over in the straw, with a hound sniffing over his bandaged arm.

As soon as he knew what was happening, he jerked upright and struck the creature as hard as he could. It growled and retreated back to safety...but didn’t yield entirely. It was watching him from a safe distance, emboldened enough to come closer. Bren found the energy to drive it off, threatening it with blows until it finally slunk away.

Even while he did it, he knew it was wasted effort. The dog would be back. As soon as his guard was down, as soon as his back was turned, as soon as his body deteriorated further. It would come back.

They could scent his weakness.

Bren could smell it with them. He was rapidly loosing energy, finding it harder and harder to exert himself for anything. Looking at himself, he could count his ribs, and easily feel the bones of his wrists. His skin was getting papery, and he certainly couldn’t feel even the faintest remnants of the slight fatty softness that Ikithon had so objected to.

He didn’t even notice hunger pains now.

With fatal knowledge, Bren counted the time, and watched the dogs grow bolder. One mongrel more starved than the rest was almost insolent. It was a rail thin creature, obviously desperate for food. And Bren could guess that in a comparison between him, and fighting for food with the other dogs, it was a simple choice to target him. The beast kept creeping closer by degrees, to see how close it could infringe before he objected. At first it was yards. Then it was a few feet less...and less.

Each time, Bren stayed tolerant a little longer, before he finally snapped and chased the brute away.

Then he jabbed threateningly from his corner, and the hungry monster didn’t run. It flinched, crouched low on coiled limbs, refusing to back away at Bren’s intimidating threat. He tried again, shouting a wordless warning and raising his hand as if to strike, but the beast didn’t move.

Fear poured through Bren’s body like ice water in his blood.

“Shoo!” He snarled, trying to make himself frightening. “Go away.”

The hound stood it’s ground, unaffected while it was still out of reach.

Heart in his throat, Bren dared a forward movement, reluctantly parting from the safety of his corner. But the dog still didn’t turn. He lunged toward it, hand batting uselessly at the air, until they were so close they could almost touch each other, but the tense stalemate remained.

Gritting his teeth, Bren punched at the dog. It sidestepped the strike like snarling lightning, and finally lunged into movement. Forward, not backwards. It snapped at Bren’s arm, and tackled his chest. Bren screamed, falling backwards as the beast’s teeth flashed for his throat. In seconds he was buried alive under the brute, barely shielding himself with his arms, as it straddled him and tried to tear out his jugular.

The stink of filthy dog, filthy self, and panic all hazed on the edge of Bren’s vision. Vaguely he knew he’d gotten a strike in against the dog’s muzzle. Then he felt teeth puncturing down into his arm, and he was blindly writhing against a creature snapping at him from all sides.

As the monster’s jaws crushed down on the flesh of his shoulder, Bren’s temper suddenly snapped. Instead of fear it was rage. Instead of horror it was hatred. And he grappled at the beast’s thick solid skull, not with the intent to strike, but with the intent to trap.

He felt his nails scratching down into fur until it bled, and his teeth joined them. He couldn’t care about civilization, or survival, or even logic. All he knew was anger, and the desire to rend until his victim was dead. The dog yelped like a tortured thing, and Bren felt bloodied fur come away in his mouth as iron filled his throat.

The dog was still kicking wildly, but it was to get away now. Bren just gritted his teeth, and held on, trying to get their positions flipped so that he could be on top and have control. But the beast wrenched away from him, and scampered away with its tail between its legs.

Bren collapsed backwards, euphoric with the sensation of winning. It was a heady rush of triumph, that made him grin and laugh madly. To an outside observer his behavior, giggling with inane emptiness through the blood and dog fur on his face, he must have looked insane.

And truly. Bren felt insane.

He felt hollow and broken, like someone had ripped open his stomach and dragged all his organs out. The laughter kept coming, but he wanted to sob instead. And he was still numbly, obsessively, fixated on the idea of food.

***

Bren jerked awake in the black blackness before dawn, and sat up.

Determination settled low and stony in his stomach, and he shuddered under the burden of it. But nevertheless, he sat up, and began shredding his clothes piece by piece. As his robe was torn away to rags, each strip was wrapped carefully around Bren’s arms, until their starved boniness was hidden from view. Layer upon additional layer fell into place, as the darkness turned gray, and the pale chill of morning began to appear. Finally, bandaged until his arms were bulky with fabric, Bren moved from his corner.

And settled by the kennel door.

Barricaded behind his knees, he impartially waited. There was little else to do. And in the ensuing interval, he reviewed the scheme in his head again, and then again.

As if noticing his changed position, the dogs watched him as they stirred awake, keeping their distance with raised hackles. Bren just stared back, coldly meeting the eyes of any beast that looked at him, and icily holding the gaze. A sense of tense nervousness settled over the kennel, as if someone had spread gunpowder over the ground, and now the fuse was burning down.

The scuff of booted steps broke the stillness. Perking to attention, the dogs immediately began to close in, anticipating their meal. Bren crouched by the door, and growled gutturally in the back of his throat, as the ring of danger hesitated to close in.

Instead of frothing eagerly at the gate, the dogs were slinking in the distance, by the time the man arrived. With the customary indifference, the man flung that days scraps over the barrier without looking at Bren, and walked off. Nothing moved.

The food was waiting, and yet Bren and all the dogs hung back. As if the gunpowder hadn’t lit yet. Then Bren darted forward, and the largest black dog lunged at the same time.

Within seconds the dog and Bren were rolling on the floor, a tangle of limbs and teeth. The familiar snap of jaws bit down on Bren’s arm, but no pain, as the fabric bandages shielded his skin. Bren snarled viciously, as close to the dog’s wordless barbarism as he could get, and next moment he was on top.

More teeth assailed him from the sides, other dogs joining the fight, but somehow Bren tenaciously held on. A dog bit his shoulder from the right, and Bren knew it should hurt, but the anger roared in his ears so that he didn’t care. The first dog had kicked out from under him, but he had the one that had bitten him down within moments. Sitting on it’s throat to keep it still, he scratched at the other brutes when they came close.

Foaming and snapping like a mad thing, the dog struggled to free itself, but Bren exerted his entire weight to keep it pinned. Again and again he was unseated, but somehow found his way to the upper hand once more. The dog finally stilled, panting heavily, and shaking with exhaustion. As soon as it stopped struggling, Bren lunged for the next one, but it yielded almost at once.

The next dog gave way beneath him without even fighting, and this time when he straddled it, none of the other beasts intervened. Still caught in the trance of anger and dominance, Bren held on, pressing its neck down into the floor, just waiting for it to fight back. But it didn’t. It just panted heavily and lay still.

Bren threw the dog away, and shakily faced the others, backed off to a distance. And screamed at the top of his lungs. No words. Just hate. The dogs didn’t snarl back, and none of them moved to meet his challenge.

As Bren crawled to the food, scattered over the straw from all the fighting, none of the dogs moved to stop him. As he picked up the nearest thing—a scrap of pork rind—none of them growled. As he ripped into it with his teeth, none of them jumped forward to take his scrap away.

Glaring the animals down, Bren tore the food apart, more to prove his point than to actually eat. After the pork, he reached for a bit of bread, stale and moldy. But the dirt and other defects couldn’t stop him, and he scarfed it down with wild abandon. It was more than he’d eaten in weeks, but he couldn’t bring himself to feast now that he had the ability to. His appetite had shrunk until he could barely bring himself to finish the bread, small as it was.

Finally he was satisfied, and slowly backed off, leaving the scraps unattended. The dogs crept forward, as Bren moved away. When he didn’t make a move to fight them, they eagerly jumped for the remaining food as if nothing had happened, and devoured everything Bren had left.

Stuffed to the gills for the first time in days, and completely exhausted how that the adrenaline wasn’t keeping him moving, Bren dragged himself away. But the food apparently wasn’t the only change. As he settled the dogs followed him, no longer keeping their distance. More than one settled quite close, and the largest black dog came close enough to prop its chin on Bren’s leg.

Part of him was too tired to ward them off, even if he’d wanted to. And something told him that this uncustomary camaraderie was part of the leadership he’d claimed. He let it happen, and none of the dog’s seemed aggressive as they settled.

***

On the twenty fourth day Ikithon came to let him out.

Bren had evinced great changes in the kennels before then. Instead of a victim Bren had transformed into a fair but formidable dictator. He was the foremost leader in a half feral dog pack that respected his rules, because he would tolerate nothing less. There was no softness because their filthy world was too harsh to harbor weakness, but there was no infighting because being ostracized was a death sentence. Survival depended on loyalty in the pack.

It was a system that Bren, now that he was no longer victimized by it, couldn’t help but admire. The dogs, in their own way, had a societal order as finely tuned as any human one. Perhaps more admirable. Because it was simple, singleminded, and needed no superficial words. Poisoned facsimile, political maneuver, lies and falsehoods could not be possible, because the dogs could not speak and needed no such deceptions.

Trust, once earned, was truly given.

Bren, now that he was no longer an outsider, found that his vicious fight had served to be the right of passage into this cooperation born of survival. The dogs gave him place, and he gave respect in return. They smelled like him, and he smelled like them. In eating, sleeping, and every other moment, Bren and the dogs lived shoulder to shoulder.

And not merely the dogs had changed. Bren himself felt the difference. The nights turned cold, and he crawled into the center of the dog pile, finding the wet dog smell and shaggy fur a comfort instead of a trial. He rolled with the hounds, and when they licked his face, he rubbed his cheek against theirs to return the token. All his thoughts had turned feral and instinctual, singleminded, bent on food and simple satisfactions. When he snarled before speaking real words, he reached for his voice and found it clumsy and rusted with disuse.

Thus, when the voice came, recalling him to civilization, Bren hardly comprehended it.

Crouched in the straw, he was absorbed in the eating ritual he’d established. It had started the morning after his fight for food rights. The man had left the usual scraps, but when the dogs had rushed in to eat it had taken only a few snarls and blows for them to immediately give place to him. They’d watched him the entire time he ate with disconcerting attention, but stayed away.

Now they hardly moved to eat at all. It took only bearing or snapping his teeth to make even the most rebellious turncoat yield place to him. Even that was hardly necessary anymore.

Sitting cross legged in the straw, Bren coolly ate his fill, watching the dogs as they watched him. Finally satisfied, Bren began dividing up the remaining scraps. It was perhaps a mere human farce, that a true hound would never have cared about, but Bren at least insisted on every creature having its equal share. So he broke up the scraps into portions.

Then he hummed in a friendly tone at the back of his throat, inviting the first dog to his meal. It was the black beast, the largest one, which Bren guessed had probably formerly held the position of leadership that he now guarded jealously for himself. But, with a dogs honesty, it showed no sign of envy, now that it was supplanted.

Bren had named the dog Alte Hasen, because of the gray fur around its muzzle. In a strange way, he felt companionship with the fierce beast. Playfully he thought of the dog like a kind of aide-de-camp, the right hand man that supported his cause, and nipped into line all the rebels. Whether the dog shared the feeling, at least it had never been aggressive after the first contest was won.

As the dog wolfed down its portion, Bren scratched its head with genuine affection. He was always careful now to show kindness as well as cruelty, trying to keep the dogs content with his balanced leadership, but in this case the principle hardly played a role. Quite simply, he was attached to the dog.

Then he heard steps outside the stony kennel, and instantly stiffened. Twenty four days, and he’d never heard the sound of anyone approaching to disturb him, once the groom was gone. Now, someone was coming.

Bren backed hastily away from the dog pack, assuming a role of detachment. The dogs, too clever to miss the change, all pounced at once. When Trent came up to the cell, all he saw was a skeletally thin figure in rags, and a vigorous tussle of dogs in which the figure took no part.

“Well?” Ikithon said, like a test, instead of a question.

That prompt made Bren shudder. He couldn’t find his voice, and couldn’t maintain his former calm. The rhythm had been disturbed, and he felt the difference with perfect clarity.

He was no longer the one with power.

Ikithon had brought Eodwulf and Astrid along, it was the first sight of them he’d had in almost a month. They looked at him like something almost deformed. A blended mixture of disgust, horror, and pity, that told him more clearly than a mirror how he was changed. Their changed behavior said it all.

But as Bren emerged a survivor in front of them, notwithstanding Ikithon’s dominating presence at his side, he felt something akin to scorn for the looks they were giving him. He had no use for them, and no desire either. Their sympathy was nothing more than weakness, clinging to ideals when survival of the fittest was paramount.

And Bren was the fittest.

He was determined to be, as Trent led him back to civilization. Ikithon was the highest authority, only one step below the gods, if not truly on the same level with them. But Bren, with his sharpened teeth and lean hunger for control, was determined to take the place Ikithon didn’t claim. Just like every other pack, this unit needed a leader. And the place was left vacant. No doubt by Ikithon’s design, happy to sit back and watch the small fry squabble over trifling titles that his larger purpose was no longer interested in.

It took no more than a glance at his competitors to make Bren certain he would win.

As they walked toward the light and free air, Bren felt Eodwulf’s hand touch his shoulder. Only a brief contact, offering sympathy and support. But Bren was done with the feeble minded kindnesses of the past. He was a bloodhound that scented weakness like a chink in Eodwulf’s armor. And he proved it, as he snarled in his friend’s face, unbothered by the boy’s shocked expression.

Leaders didn’t tolerate pity.


End file.
